“Go away before I call the Guardians.”
Did he mean cops? Damn it, I should’ve swiped a jacket or at least begged for one, because outside was a frickin’ icebox. I rubbed my shoulders and winced when I touched the wound, but otherwise, I felt much better now than when I’d entered last night, and my belly was still full. I hadn’t eaten that well in over a month.
On the street, a few people stared but kept moving in one direction, north from here. I didn’t want any trouble with cops or whoever patrolled this place, and I doubted the guy would open the door again. My home was southeast of Bel Air, so I moved down the street in that direction.
Townhomes. Rows of townhomes. Family homes, judging by the people coming in and out of them. Kids yelled, dogs barked, cats sat at the windows, so this was no fantasyland. It was LA, albeit with some modifications. As I rounded yet another sharp corner, I spotted the Pacific. I paused, relieved and grounded in the familiar. I am sane.
The street I came into was wide and much busier than the ones before. The cars, nothing more than plain metal boxes with a few windows, glided about a hundred feet over the unpaved roads. No wheels. Nothing under the metal boxes. In the ground, thin metal poles had been installed that blinked on top. These seemed to guide the car air traffic.
Underneath the cars, people walked. Nobody looked surprised. Only I gaped, because above the air traffic, angels flew northbound, hundreds of them. A legion. They made my heart race. I better get moving. I crossed the street and headed toward where I imagined my home would be.
And I kept walking for what felt like an hour in the freezing cold. Nothing looked familiar. Not the coffee shops I passed, not the restaurants or traffic, not even the way people dressed. The men wore those tall hats one would see in a historical movie, and only a few women wore pants rather than long skirts. My teeth chattered, and I stopped, mad, desperate, confused. “What is going on here?” I shouted.
A man bumped into my arm. Ouch. He kept running, throwing a “Sorry” over his shoulder. More men ran up the street. People moved about their business.
An angel landed in front of me. He wore a gold-plated breastplate and black leather pants. I backed away and patted my back pocket, only then remembering I was unarmed. Suppressing the urge to flee, I remained in place.
“Regiment number?” he demanded.
“What?”
“The number of your regiment?”
“I don’t have a regiment.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one.”
He whistled, and another angel joined him. He looked me up and down, stroking his chin.
“Light brown medium-length hair, brown eyes, looking lost and confused.” He smiled. “Great find, brother. I’ve searched the entire city for her.”
Nervous, I smiled back.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed my arm, and I yelped in pain as his fingers dug into my wound.
“Hey, don’t touch me.”
The other grabbed my other arm, and as I struggled against them as they dragged me, I forgot about the wings—until they spread them wide and over my head, and we lifted. I kicked and screamed. This was how humans died. Angels played around and then dropped people, watching us splatter our brains out on the pavement.
They flew fast and high and hard. The wind blew my hair and chilled my bones, and I screamed above the traffic. That was when I saw it. All of it.
There was one wide street where people walked away from a single massive fortress in place of that Bel Air house I’d left. My neighborhood, a block away from a huge high school stadium, should’ve come into view.
This was no Los Angeles, though this city might be sitting at the edge of the Pacific. It wasn’t Long Beach, Santa Clara, San Diego, or even San Francisco. The entire city sat on a mountain with the houses bunched together in a dark-gray, snow-topped cluster.
As the wind whipped my hair back, I still hoped I’d find my street, my house, Lucky, the three-legged dog two houses down from me. He used to pee on our lawn every morning. Sometimes he pooped too, and Mr. Rogers picked it up with a plastic bag.
Instead, I spotted a marching army. Rows and rows of humans all dressed like me, white on white against the snow-covered roads. Armed with spears instead of guns, they followed on foot as a legion of angels flew overhead toward the ocean.
Everyone in the city seemed to be moving south.
The angels were carrying me north, toward the damned fortress.
This couldn’t be good for me.
Chapter Four
The angels ascended toward the structure I’d come from yesterday, the house in Bel Air that was no longer the house or Bel Air, the last place I wanted to be. When one angel called the place the House of Command, it definitely sounded like I was living a nightmare in a military angel-occupied city, where humans on the ground weren’t afraid of angels above.
This hadn’t been the case only last month or even yesterday, when humans scattered the second they spotted an angel in the sky. If they got one of us, we fell and broke, and they laughed and laughed, their voices musical and beautiful, like the laughter of the man I met last night. Except, he didn’t have wings.
The angels flying me flared out theirs. Fearing they’d drop me, I closed my eyes.
We jerked back.
“We’re landing,” one explained. “Feet up and out of the way.”
Snapping my eyes open, I bent my legs at the knees, and watched their feet land softly. They stayed in place on either side of me, both looking at me. “You can walk, or we can drag you,” one said.
Extending a foot, I touched the ground and tapped it with my toe. Once assured it was really there, I stepped down on both feet. Expecting them to release me since we weren’t flying, I nodded. Looking ahead, they dragged me up the fifty-some stairs and into a massive well-lit foyer where people moved past us as if we didn’t exist.
Three staircases led upstairs, each one connected with a bridge. The roof was wide open, and I believed there was enough space to drop from the sky directly into the foyer.
The angels dragged me toward the left and entered what appeared to be an office space with a single massive wooden desk that sat in front of a strange chair. Generally, a comfortable office chair came with a plush back support. This chair supported only the lower back. Behind the chair, an intricate, careful, beautiful map with calligraphic handwritten notes scattered around it covered the entire wall.
The two released me and stood by the door, their hands folded in front of them. “The commander will deal with you right away,” an angel said. “Have a seat.” A pair of chairs faced the office chair across the desk. Instead of sitting, I approached the windows on the left.
Dark clouds gathered above the city. This structure seemed vast and had three levels, each with a different yard, if you could even call it a yard. On the first, uniformed people and angels assembled into groups, some larger than others. A man paced before each group and addressed it. I didn’t know much about the military, but you didn’t need to know much to get the feeling this was something military. On the second level, they trained with wooden sticks, and on the third, they pitched tents.
From the sky, lightning crackled and angels fell. They crashed to the ground, bleeding, missing limbs, some with broken wings. I couldn’t look away from the defeated beauty. It was surreal, though clearly only to me, as the other humans kept moving. On the ground, some angels got up and walked inside the house. Others limped behind them. Some crawled, while others didn’t move at all.